Comics, programming, games, writing, and whatever else I can squeeze in

What a tangled web we weave. Well, this weekend I’m going to take some more time (from an already hectic schedule) to get some artwork up on the site. Old stuff and sketchbook scans. That sort of thing. Also some Bryce stuff that I need to touch up once I re-install PhotoShop. I’m converting over completely to PS6 from Paint Shop Pro 7. I really like Paint Shop and have been using it since version 3 but in the long run it really just doesn’t measure up to the almight Adobe. Plus I just got my copy of Illustrator 9 so I’m going to install that and be an Adobe devotee. It’ll help with the digital comics I have in the works (PSP can’t seem to open .AI files that I make in Illustrator, and my balloons for comics are all in .AI format).

About 2 weeks ago I began a new revolution. Well, okay, it was awhile in the making. I guess I started writing BBS doors back in the mid-80s or so (with MajorBBS 5.x and some DOS based BBS systems). A few years ago, Galacticomm folded and basically the death of MBBS/Worldgroup was inevitable. BBS’ have been on the decline for the past few years with the Internet rearing it’s ugly head but recently a few new packages are appearing and there’s hope for the old girl yet. Synchronet is a new version of an old commercial BBS that has gone open source. The cool thing is that not only is it free and open source, but it’s a really great package and you can really customize it to look like most other BBS’ (I have mine to emulate MajorBBS so there’s some consistancy there when moving between the two). Anyways, so my newfound friend in the BBS is back and I’ve dusted off some old games to revisit them and build new versions. I just put up Phantasia, a multi-user RPG hack’n’slash game onto Dreamvision BBS for beta testing and it looks pretty good (well, my opinion may be biased). Anyways, so I’m back into door/game development and will be releasing regular door, synchronet and worldgroup versions of the games as they get completed. I’ll set up pages for the various games elsewhere, just waiting for a response from a service to get some space.

I have a new program that I’m just getting ready for release that will allow you to publish comics on the Internet. It’s pretty slick and is just a glorified layout manager. You import scans for panels, arrange them into pages, put them together into a book or story and upload the whole thing to a website for publishing. Very handy for those doing daily/weekly strips or whatever. I’ll add the pages for that with screenshots and such shortly.

Lastly, I’m working on a new interior design program that will allow interior design students to create rooms without having to purchase (or try to understand) something as massive as AutoCAD. There’s also plug-in modules that I’m adding to allow to add Feng-Shui templates to your designs. Should be cool. My real goal with the program to create kioks for IKEA and have people build their rooms virtually but I have to sell IKEA on the idea first (and they’re in Sweden). Wish me luck.

Hmmm… so comics, programming, games, writing, and whatever else I can squeeze in now. That’s the skinny so far.